Rock Formations - The How, What & Why of Rock Band Names

311

A friend of the band was arrested for indecent exposure when caught skinny-dipping and was taken home by the police, naked and handcuffed, to his parents. The band thought this funny, and learning that the Omaha police code for indecent exposure is a “311”, they decided to adopt it as the band name. The rumor that the name refers to the KKK (as in Ku Klux Klan), with K being the 11th letter of the alphabet (i.e. 3x11), was strongly denied by the band as an unfortunate coincidence. P-Nut (b. Aaron Charles Wills, bass) got his nickname from someone saying that his head was like a peanut. SA Martinez (b. Douglas Vincent Martinez, rapper) was re-christened by vocalist Nick Hexum as SA on Hexum’s return to Nebraska from California–SA stands for “Spooky Apparition”, but also refers to the use of “ese” (like “dude”, and pronounced “es-say”) in everyday Hispanic parlance.